


End Game

by fireflyslove



Category: Avengers: Infinity War - Fandom, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Fix-It, Gen, Inappropriate use of Infinity Stones, POV Thor (Marvel), Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Thanos (Marvel) Dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-05-02 00:03:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14532291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fireflyslove/pseuds/fireflyslove
Summary: Thanos plans to cull half the life in the universe at random... and accidentally starts with himself. So no one dies, and then the Time Stone is abused to bring people back from the dead.IW spoilers, obvs





	End Game

**Author's Note:**

> Since my planned epic time-travelling Nebula fic is currently eluding me, here's something that's 1300 words longer than I intended it to be.
> 
> Thor thinks of the Guardians as "The Morons" completely unironically, I promise you. He actually thinks that's what they're calling themselves, although he doesn't quite understand /why/ someone would want to, he's all about self-determination.

The end of the world. Stormbreaker had failed. Thanos turned, looked them all over, and  _smiled._ He snapped his fingers, and 

 

 

 

nothing happened.

Everyone was frozen, waiting for the culling of half the life in the universe, and still, nothing happened.

Thor sat on the ground, Stormbreaker next to him, and prepared to raise it again, when Thanos began to... disappear. It was slow at first, just a wisp of the fingers of his right hand vanishing, but soon it moved up his arm, and then he noticed.

"No!" he roared, shaking what was left of his arm. It moved faster, as if spurred by his shaking. Soon his legs and torso also began to disappear, until all that remained was a screaming head that faded into dust. 

Gone too was the gold of the Infinity Gauntlet. The six Infinity Stones rested, dust covered, on the grass.

Thor began to laugh. Stormbreaker had failed, but Thanos' own arrogance had killed him. Without the power of the Gauntlet binding them together, the Stones returned to their inert state. Half the universe still lived, but the other half had also been spared. 

"What?" a voice came from behind him. "Where did he go?  _Where did he go?_ " Steven was shouting. (The man had asked Thor years ago to stop calling him Captain Rogers, that "Steve" was just fine. They had compromised on Steven, although Thor still privately thought of him as "Friend Steven")

"I believe he is dead," Thor replied. "He intended to randomly cull half the population of the universe, and random selection started with him."

"It's... over?" Steven asked. 

The sound of gunfire from directly behind them drew their attention. "His kids are still kicking," a man with a very large gun said. "You're Thor, right?"

"I am indeed. I presume you are the good Captain's shieldbrother, Barnes?" Thor asked, not looking as he sent a bolt of lightning directly into the face of one of the hexapod creatures.

"Call me Bucky," Bucky said, mowing down five.

Suddenly, there was quiet. The hexapods were all gone, bodies piled in heaps, and no more poured out of the forest.

“It is over now,” Thor stated, mostly to the empty air.

A ragged cheer came from across the battlefield, sweeping through the throats of all the fighters, building until it was a deafening roar. People who had fallen stood, and braced themselves on their compatriots. Thor put Stormbreaker down, and leaned heavily on it. It _was_ over, but Thor had still lost everything.

Then a vortex opened up in front of them. Thor lifted Stormbreaker again, prepared to fight until the end of time if Thanos required it, but instead a young human boy stepped through, looking very confused. He was followed by Stark; the wizard who had interrupted his last visit to Earth; the Morons; and an angry being with blue skin who looked as if she trusted no one.

“Sorry we’re late,” Stark said. “It took the Wiz here long enough to figure out where we were going. Now where’s the big purple thumb?”

“He’s dead, Tony,” Steven said. “Disintegrated, by his own plans.” He was leaning heavily on Bucky, both of them looking a little worse for wear.

For once, it seemed that Stark had nothing to say.

One of the Morons, the big one with the red markings, Thor wasn’t sure whether he had ever introduced himself, began to laugh, a raucous sound that echoed off the trees. “Killed by his own plan. Oh, this is better than my knives. Tell me, Bearded Man, did he suffer?”

“It sure sounded like it,” someone female, probably Natasha, said from behind Thor, quietly. But loud enough for the Moron to hear.

“I only regret that he took so many lives before his own,” Thor said. “It was a fitting death for him, though.”

“The stones,” the wizard said. “Where are the Stones?”

The man in the black feline suit pointed, and the wizard approached the pile of dust that had been Thanos. He picked one, and only one, of the Stones up, glowing green in his hand.

“This is the Time Stone,” he said. “I believe it would be a useful exercise to reach back at least a few weeks and right a few wrongs.”

“You would do that?” Stark asked. "When you gave it up to Thanos?"

“I’m the Master of the Mystic Arts,” the wizard said. “I can bring people back to life if I want to. And I gave it to him because I saw that in the one future where we won, this was the only way."

“You could save Gamora?” the human Moron asked.

“Where did you say she had gone?” the wizard asked.

The Moron replied, the wizard opened a vortex, activated the Time Stone, reached through, and suddenly a green-skinned woman, presumably Gamora, was falling from the sky. She was stopped inches from the ground by a web of red magic, and slowly stood upright.

Gamora looked around for a moment, obviously incredibly confused.

“Peter?” she asked, and both the human Moron and the young boy looked at her. “What’s happening?”

“It’s a long story,” Peter said, pulling her into an embrace.

“Can you bring him back?” Wanda asked, kneeling next to the husk of Vision’s body.

“This is the one with the Mind Stone in his head?” the wizard asked.

Wanda nodded.

“Well, if I’m keeping one, it only seems right that he gets to as well,” he said. He approached the grey husk, gestured, and then suddenly color flooded back into Vision, he sat up, stood up, and then the Mind Stone flew from the pile of Thanos-dust and reunited itself with his head. The next few moments were a reunion so tender that Thor found himself looking away.

“And you?” the wizard asked him. “You have lost, that I can see. How long ago?”

“A few days,” Thor said. “My brother had the second Stone, and Thanos attacked our ship for it. Many of my people escaped in escape pods, but more did not. They were killed by Thanos and his children.”

“I will need your help to find them,” the wizard said. “Interdimensional is easy, interstellar, not so much.” He extended his hand, and Thor took it. “Concentrate on them. One of them, if that’s easier.”

Thor thought of his people; of the children huddled, frightened on the deck of the ship; of Heimdall, fierce and loyal, golden eyes blazing as he grasped his sword; of Loki, silver tongued and slippery as an eel, but somehow still Thor’s brother.

“Ah,” the wizard said. “I’ve found them. But I’m going to need my arm back.”

Thor dropped his hand, and the wizard began to gesture once again. A vortex, much larger this time, opened, and through it poured Thor’s people. First came those who had died on the deck of the Ark ship, then those who had escaped in pods, pods and all. It took a great deal of maneuvering on the part of the superhumans and the magicians to make enough space for the several thousand Asgardians and several Sakaarians in the glade, but they did it. At the end, holding up the rear, and guarding their backs as always, came Heimdall, tall and proud.

“Thank you, my king,” he said, bowing slightly to Thor.

Thor nodded, and then gave into his urges and pulled a startled Heimdall into a hug. Heimdall awkwardly patted him on the back, and looked relieved when Thor released him.

Thor looked over the gathered crowd. They were all here, save one.

“Where is Loki?” Thor asked.

“These are all that was on the ship,” the wizard said. “Perhaps if you concentrate on your treacherous sibling and him alone, we can find him.”

So they repeated the process, for what seemed like hours, but was perhaps only moments, and finally, the wizard jerked his hand, a tiny portal opened, and a form came crashing down through the branches to hit the ground hard.

“No!” it cried, looking up at the unfamiliar faces surrounding it. Then it froze. It was small, slight beyond most humanoid proportions, and it was blue. Thor realized what it was then, Loki, in his true form. “Please!” Loki shouted. “He must be stopped.”

Thor ran over to him, and put a hand on Loki’s chest. Loki’s eyes, red in this form, were wide and panicked. “It is over, brother,” he said calmly. “Thanos is dead. Our people are safe, you… you live.”

A shimmer of magic and Loki took his Aesir form again, eyes narrowing at Thor.

“How do I know that this isn’t just some trick cooked up by Thanos?” he asked suspiciously.

“Would a trick have wizards and witches? Would you be on Midgard of all places? And would you not still have the Tesseract in your possession?” Thor asked.

Loki stopped hyperventilating for one moment to look around. “It isn’t a trick? You’re real? He’s gone?”

“By his own hand,” Thor said. “He wanted to cull half the life in the universe, and he started with himself.”

“Oh, this is not a trick,” Loki said. “Only reality could be that ironic. Even _I_ could not make that up.”

Thor pulled Loki to his feet, and looked back at the wizard, who was currently consulting with the human in the feline suit.

“Thank you, wizard,” he said.

“Oh, it was nothing,” the wizard said. “But you’re not getting any of the leftover Infinity Stones.”

“Nor would I want them,” Thor said. “Too much trouble. Out of curiosity, what are you going to do with them?”

“Some of them will be sent back to their homes, I believe the Avengers intend to destroy the Mind Stone. I will keep the Time Stone. The Soul Stone will be returned to its tomb, though its guardian is going to have to be taken care of…”

“Oh,” Gamora said. “Trust me. I have plans for that guy. Red faced skull looking bastard.”

“I’m sorry,” Steven said. “Did you say Red Skull?”

And so the plans went. Xandar and Knowhere would be set to rights, the Morons (and possibly Steven and Bucky if they had any say in the matter) would journey to the home of the Soul Stone to eradicate its guardian and bury the stone so far down in the crust it would never be found. The dead on this battlefield would be pulled back from just before they died.

The Asgardians themselves had an uncertain future. Thor thought he might try to find a patch of country here on Midgard, but this planet was already crowded. But Asgardians were long lived, and there was always time to find another home. For now this would do.

The end of the world had already come, Ragnarok as prophesied, and now a second Armageddon had been narrowly avoided.

Thor hoped the next ten years of his life were calmer than the previous decade.

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr: @anakinslefthand


End file.
